Re: Road pricing - have your say

The fact that our car use taxation is high does not imply that it has no significant effect on car use, because we don't know (do we?) that there wouldn't be much more car use if it were taxed less.

Norwich Union seem to be managing it.

Well we do drive more fuel efficient cars than in for example America where fuel taxes are much lower.

Yes they could use it for tax purposes, but what they would be looking at for management decisions is the real cost.

I think this is down to a lot more than fuel tax such as the size of the roads the type of journeys made, car culture etc....

Mark

The norwich union scheme is on a much smaller scale and it's only been running for a short time. It's also aimed at low users. Also it has not be commissioned by the government.

I think we need to wait and see before we can conclude that it works.

Mark

...

The economics of London's original zone are scary - Crapita get to keep most of the dosh, something like (varies by year and includes a bail-out or two as their original efforts were loss-making) 100m in "costs", Livingstone gets to play with the leftovers of around 30mil. The rate upped from GBP5 to 8 to give him something. Just like movies the profits tend to be tiny. What wonders a good accountant can do. Hopefully the political costs will outweight the financial ones.

Bitstring:

It reads car plates, checks who paid for a specific plate (or exemptions), then off to the lads to eyeball the unpaid. However, reg plate thefts, clones and mis-readings rip a hole in the definition of "works". I bet men in little huts would be cheaper and far more effective. And that doesn't even consider the blue badge scams (a neighbour's door was jemmed for her legitimate & needed badge).

NU also came out this weekend (Wail on Sunday) against GPS congestion charging: you might get cheaper insurance on an Mway but the gov will charge more on it => conflict between cost to drive on a road versus cost of insurance to drive on it. Such a muddle gets worse. Road is usually freeflow but suddenly a crash jams it, you can't chose to get off so you pay more.

To answer the "managing it", commercial companies tend to simpler workable schemes, govs tend not to. NU's scheme works on a time of day and route plan, it's miles (sorry!) simpler than any of the mooted mad tax schemes being plotted.

What management decisions?

The management decision to share a car + driver between the partners or have one car per partner.